LaurieWrites

Thursday

My professor just showed us this Slate.com cartoon page, and I love it. Now if it could only help me find a DAMNED METAPHOR to analyze. Geez. I can't think of one. My Language and Politics class is really hard. My professor is so freaking smart that all of my ideas sound stupid when I'm proposing them. The metaphor I proposed to analyze wasn't even a metaphor. Flipping. Idiot.

I wrote a whole awesome (to me, anyway. God, what an ego.) post last night about music and my computer crashed, so I'm really bitter right now. I may try to write it again later. Maybe. Gosh. I'm so pissed. Long story short: Check out The Wreckers. I think Gnarls Barkley is way overrated. Listen to Chuck Brown. The Dixie Chicks have a new blogger and its not me. Where is the justice? I played "Standing in the Need of Prayer" in my piano class today. Would you like to come to my final recital?

Otherwise, it is Thursday. My lunch was unsatisfying. I hate when my lunch is unsatisfying - especially REALLY unsatisfying. This has been a "hurry up and wait" kind of week. I thought I had a sweet freelance reporting gig lined up for the weekend, but it turns out that I don't. I can't seem to figure out a reasonable plane ticket to California. Things are just...weird.

Overheard on campus yesterday: "Dude, you're ASIAN. You're SUPPOSED to be in credit English." What?

Today was my dad's birthday, and my uncle and his wife and my sister and her boyfriend came over. We had pizza and beer and then cake and talked about our upcoming "family" summer vacation, and reminisced about summers in Jersey when I was a kid. It was awesome. Those summers were awesome. We talked about going back up for a long weekend, all of us - and that would be the happiest thing ever, I swear. Hanging out and talking about it tonight both was itself and reminded me of everything good about family, and although sometimes it scares me to think that I won't have one (exceedingly possible given my age, seemingly bizarre taste in men, and the fact that I've got only one sibling. So when you grew up in one like I did, it's a kind of scary proposition. Just the facts, ma'am. Can't help it.) these moments make me feel like that kind of foundation could carry me through regardless, just because I'll never lose them. Thank God for them. We're going to play a lot of Scattergories this year, it's been promised. I am so excited to be there.

Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are fighting, and I just don't know how I can go on.

In case of rapture...

...this car will definitely be unmanned.

I'm driving to piano class today, and I see this van, with a bumper sticker that reads, "Don't let the car fool you. My real treasure is in heaven."

At first I was confused, like, "why is your van trying to fool me?" And let's face it, it's a little wordy for a bumper sticker. It's not like "My other car is a broomstick" or the one about practicing random acts of kindness while your poodle beats up the honor student. But then it occurred to me: It means that I should by no means infer from this sweet ride that it's the only thing that's really important. When the saints go marching in, they will not (presumably) be piloting this or any vehicle - but they will somehow be headed directly for the eternal 50 percent off Target sale behind the pearly gates (who came UP with "pearly" for gates? What in the HELL is a pearly gate?)

Anyway, the bumper sticker I get, which doesn't mean that I like it or think it makes any kind of rational sense. That's a different story altogether. It's still kind of awkwardly phrased, and a little bit weird...but it could conceivably be true that at first I was sweatin' the van a little bit. Just a little bit.

Quote of the weekend, before I forget, like I forgot that other thing I thought was funny except now I can't remember it.

Dave: So are you saying this playlist is 22 hours long?

Me: That's what he said.

Dave: So, we can be sitting here at 10 a.m. tomorrow and it'll still be going.

Dan: No, because actually it didn't start until 2, my friend, so we can be here 'til NOON.

Dave: You actually sat there and made a 22-hour playlist.

Dan: Hey, this is for the annual BACKYARD BARBECUE BASH. I do not phone this one in.

(*Ed. note: this was shortly after the existence of a Dropkick Murphy's song was noted somewhere on the playlist, although the requestor was told he may have to wait until 4 a.m. to hear it. Long live Steve Jobs. Good times.)

Pictures! Pictures!

This weekend I opted to ignore the ill health that's been slowing the progression of my LIFE to try to go out and have some fun. I was mostly successful (but I'm still fighting whatever this is. It's such a drag.)  Herewith, some shots of the H-town hizzy and daddy's day, plus a little bit of self-portrait frivolity. It must be all the carcinogens in all this grilled meat I've been scarfing down.

The Colonel goes buck wild under the terrible influence of that little whippersnapper the Taco Bell chihuahua.

Speed Racer in the center lane (the guy on the bike, not me.)

This lovely dog was hanging around and finally we realized that he didn't belong to anyone at the party. He was obviously well taken care of and behaved so well, so it was driving me nuts that no one knew where he lived. I would have taken him home if I weren't in a situation where that would be a very, very bad idea. I keep thinking about him and it's driving me a little nuts. I said that already.  Oh dear.

This is apparently known as a "manly man" contest. Cooler water has ice in it, and is extremely cold. First person out of the cooler loses. The guy in the green shirt (also one of the most excellent people on the planet) won, which seems to be the normal course of affairs.

*Note: Manly man contests tend to involve significant amounts of alcohol. Just sayin'.

  Zest. Art. It's all good.

Corn on the cob, Part 1.

My sister made this monster salad. She's going to cooking school soon, which makes sense.

Corn on the cob, Part 2. This is the most outstanding thing my dog has ever done, at least from a photographic standpoint. 

"Shopping". And panting, like any red-blooded American male.

McGrath was my grandmother's last name before she got married. (She was never a "maiden", I assure you. That term blows, I swear.) This shirt pleased him immensely. He has some kind of odd interest in my sister or I giving a child this name as a middle name, should either of us chance to procreate. I'm down, all Sugar Ray concerns aside.

And finally, for some reason, I decided it was Self-Portrait Sunday.

First, "How you doin'?"

And that cracked me up at myself because I laugh at myself when I'm stupid.

Which of course means that a Brady Bunch tic-tac-toe pose is in order. And finally just something sort of normal.

Hi, that was completely exhausting, and I have no idea why I did it. Anyway, moving on...I hope y'all have a great week, wherever and whomever you are.

He hardly knows me

So one of my silly favorite things about the trip to my friend J's house is that I get to go to this dive liquor store near him called the Liquor Locker (Can I tell you I just spelled that "licker" at first. Wow. It's the place, I'm telling you.) and bring him some beer for his party. Suffice to say that the town he lives in (which I love dearly for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that for every sort of rednecky and a little bit backwards thing about it, there's more of a sweetness and genuineness to the people there than most places I am on a daily basis) is a bit rural, a bit...hmmm...not the city, or even the suburbs, even though parts of it have a definitely "suburbian" vibe. Dale Earnhardt LIVES in this place, okay, y'all? And not like the "Elvis lives in Vegas" theory. Like, the SPIRIT of Dale lives here. You pickin' up what I'm puttin' down? Yeah. Anyway, so I like it up there, and one of the minuscule reasons, as I was saying, was that every time I stop in the Liquor Locker, a questionable individual in a pickup truck is guaranteed to hit on me either before, during or after my five-minute transaction. Bam. It never fails. Given the overall bizarre and random nature of my life, it's fun to have some consistencies to point to, and a few that involve harmless folk in double-cab pickups aren't so bad.

Today I did look awfully cute, I must say (Haha! I did! I can't help it! You know how some days you just feel it? Like you're working it? And other days you feel like your clothes are dumb and your hair is stupid? I have lots of those, so I guess ones like this one make up for it a little.) ANYWAY, I was having a pretty good day. So I was not as surprised as I usually am when the fine young man with the bright red neck (they love me. I'm serious. It's a demographic appeal I don't understand, and don't really wish to analyze for fear that I'll actually figure something out) leaned out of the window of his truck and was all, "What's up, baby? Come on, baby."

Clearly, he has never met me, so has no clue in hell as to what my reaction may be to such silken words. I mean, really. Please. More. PLEASE call me "baby" some more when you've never met me. It is  my most favoritest thing. And if I were to hear that shit at home, I'd likely glare at him or say (at least to myself, because I talk my best trash to myself, for real) "She's GOT to be somebody's baby, she must be somebody's baby, but she ain't yours." But since I'm in my most happy place when I get the hell out of town, and what do you really expect when you're sashaying into the Liquor Locker on a blazing hot afternoon anyway, I just smile blandly. They peel out of the parking lot, as is the native custom of dudes like that in trucks like that, and all is well. It's a win-win. I get to go "That's right, I am totally cute, you guys" for a minute, and truck boy gets to go "Heh heh, I said "come ON". Heheh. I said "What's UPPPPPPP????????" We all move along - nothing to see here.

Except for the scary guy inside the store buying six purple "Zipper Head" shooters - you know, the kind that come in the test tubes that they sell in clubs? I had no idea you could purchase those disgusting things for private consumption, and it doesn't make me feel entirely better to know that you can, but probably if you can't find it at the Liquor Locker, they don't make it. Baby.

I performed my first ensemble piano piece today with my teacher and can I just say "freaking out like a little girl"? Wow. I also played "Jingle Bells" for my solo piece. All I need now are black patent leather shoes, those little white socks with the ruffles, and my mother with the video camera, because dude, I had a mini-recital.

Yogabeans

New posts here. I really can't stop thinking this is funny. (If you agree, look for the link to the last one on the bottom, right-hand side. I think. Look for it somewhere, in any case.)

Sick Day

So I am really sick, with what turns out to be - and I still can't believe this - a cold. A virus, in fact. Now, I'm fine with not taking antibiotics if I don't need them, because when I finally need them to really work, like say I have typhoid fever someday and they'll keep me alive through one more episode of Tuckerville before I croak, I want them at full power. Plus they make me sick to my stomach, so I give the doctor the benefit of the doubt, and try not to freak out if he tells me that whatever this is that feels like it's killing me hardly is viral and just needs to "run its course."

Well, in this case, I knew it was peanut butter-antibiotic time. The coughing that wracked my body all weekend could only be related to an infection of the worst sort, I was convinced. Plus, I couldn't breathe at all, and even drove my dog out of my room with the horrifying coughing and wheezing noises I was making (something that has never happened before, since sleeping is canine religion for this little dude, and he is not easily disturbed.) So I dragged myself into the doctor this morning fully expecting a rack of amoxicillin, and I didn't care how nauseous it made me. I wanted this little excursion to hell to be knocked out in 24 hours, with a beer chaser.

So when the nice new doctor in his very earnest Eddie Bauer slip-on shoes and tie with red roses (!!!!) on it told me that it wasn't an infection at all, I was all "Really? No, really?" Because all I can say is, if this is a cold, it is the Grendel and his mother of colds. The bad, bad, Leroy Brown of colds. The Kim Jong Il of colds. ("Sooooooo....you have a rittle cold, ehhhh? I show you cold, stupid Americran. Ha!") This cold took my weekend and pulverized it. It made it really hard to practice Jingle Bells on the keyboard. It made me miss Last Train Home. It made watching Zoolander again seem like a good idea. In short, it was evil.

To his credit, my new doctor seemed appropriately sorry to tell me that I didn't have an infection that could be knocked out with any existing drug, and was sort of sheepish about recommending an over-the-counter medication and a sample of nasal stuff he produced rapidly from his stash.

This is a good time to add that my new little doctor is quite cute. Cute, and married, like every interesting man I've met since 2005, which means that he may as well be a monk or my cousin, given my feelings about that tiny little matter. But even though he's married, and therefore the part of my brain automatically shuts down that would in any way flirt with him, there's still something about an attractive man in earnest slip-on Eddie Bauers not only knowing how much you weigh, discussing your ovarian issues, and looking up your virusy, snotty nose to boot that doesn't make for a very high self-esteem morning. Therefore, I did the only thing I knew to do before I had to go and sit, sick, in my class this evening.

I went to Target to buy myself a toy.

When I was a kid, and I was sick, my mom would generally buy me stuff, because in general she's cool like that. She'd buy me magazines, and special Popsicles, and chapter books, and goofy little toys. Yesterday, in fact, she brought me these, because I'm serious, we both thought I was that amoxicillin sick:

Pretty, huh?

Today, I felt so rotten, so hungry but not able to conceive of anything that tasted palatable, so not in the mood to do anything, and so irritated with myself for feeling sorry for myself, and letting all the stuff that's been bothering me bother me, that I chose to continue the post-doctor visit tradition for myself. ME. MOI. Treat-needing me. An hour of wandering through Target later, I had a new day planner, some makeup to cover the broken capillaries and chapped nose caused by the sneezing and coughing caused by this ODDLY INFECTION-LIKE VIRUS, and, la piece de resistance (sorry for no accents there...), this:

Of course it's little tiny - it's a Matchbox car! I chose it over the Johnny Depp action figure - a close call for a minute, but really, it was an easy choice. And for two bucks, a MUCH better deal than the monthly tab on my real-life Beetle (although THIS one is the for-real, 1962 variety) I got totally happy for a minute. Here it is from the other side:

I'm still sneezing and I still can't breathe, but I totally have a cool Matchbox car now, which does indeed make me feel just a little bit better.

Toronto Music Hall

This is a photo of a new concert hall in Toronto taken by one of my flickr contacts. I think it's really cool. It's cool from the outside, too. Toronto has long been on my list of cities to visit - I've got to get there soon. This trip sounds pretty cool, especially because I have a friend to stay with in Montreal who wants me to come up and visit (twist my arm, please. She's doing me the favor, trust me.) The taste of the "organized tour" that I got in the Bahamas makes me wary of anything of that sort (the train tour, not staying with my friend...) though. I like to head to a new city and figure it out as I go. It's been the best way I've found to get to know an area and the people who live there. That's my favorite thing.

 

One more reason why NYC is cool

I totally want to steal this idea for the Metro.